AMERI deal: Resign if you were misled – Namoale to Akufo-Addo

A former National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP has called on President Akufo-Addo to resign after he gave executive approval to the renegotiated Ameri deal.

The Daily Statesman Newspaper on Wednesday reported that the government intends to cancel the revised power agreement with Dubai-based AMERI.

According to Namoale, the president was complicit in the deal and must take absolute responsibility for it by tendering in his resignation letter.

Speaking to host Kwaku Owusu Agyei on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa Fm, Friday, the former La Dadekotopon legislator lambasted the president for his show of incompetence and called for his head to roll.

“The president must resign, yes he must, you can’t claim you were misled, it means you didn’t do due diligence and how can you still be president if you can supervise a deal as bad as this, for me I think it will be better for the president to tender in his resignation letter,” he said.

“It’s a pure show of incompetence on the part of the president to have given an executive approval, you gave executive approval because you knew what you were doing so why are you now telling us you were misled, that doesn’t satisfy us, just resign,” he added.

Meanwhile a former Deputy Power Minister, John Jinapor speaking in a press conference said the president should be held accountable for the “bad deal”.

“It therefore sums up that the president is very comfortable with this deal. The President is certainly neck-deep and arms-deep into this whole deal and you cannot but hold the president accountable.”

It has emerged that President Akufo-Addo was misled into granting executive approval for the deal under the guise of there being an urgent need to have a bill laid in Parliament before the House rose.

Under the new proposal, the Greece-based Mytilineos International Trading Company was to assume management responsibility for the AMERI emergency power-generation arrangement negotiated by the past NDC government, in effect extending the original outsourcing agreement by ten more years.

But on his return to Accra from the 53rd session of the ECOWAS Heads of State meeting in Togo, Akufo-Addo quickly requested and received a further briefing on the new deal.

At the briefing it emerged that the agreement to which he had given executive approval on July 31 lacked the requisite input from the Attorney General and the Ministry of Finance.

Sources confirm that the President had been misled to believe that both departments had assessed the deal thoroughly.

Under the proposed new deal, Ghana is to make annual payments of $75m for 15 years: under the existing arrangement, the nation is contracted to pay $102m for five years.